Leaving Queensland & heading into New South Wales, took us to our first stop, Byron Bay. The rain was determined to follow us & for the first couple of days, it was fairly persistant. We stayed at Nomads Hostel, which was a bit of a party hostel, quiet nights in weren't on the agenda. Byron consisted mostly of a beach & one road of shops & restaurants. Most nights out saw all the backpackers head to a bar called 'Cheeky Monkeys'. You could get cheap dinners & fairly cheap drinks here, so it suited us. Byron Bluesfest had just taken place over the Easter weekend, so it was still fairly busy in town, which made for a good night out. On our first night in the hostel, we bumped into English Laura who had taken a road trip from Brisbane with a couple of her university friends. So they joined us at Cheekys. We also met another English girl called Laura to complete our party & obviously Sally & Amylou were still in tow. After much partying & celebrating, we stumbled on home.

We took a day trip to Nimbin (Australia's version of Amsterdam) on the day of the Royal Wedding. We were picked up from the hostel by a bus that had been painted with psychedelic colurs & made to look very hippy-ish. As part of our drivers introduction spiel, he warned us all about the dangers of drugs & the potential risks of getting arrested should we attempt to buy any. Nimbin was hosting the 'Mardi Grass' festival that weekend. It is a party weekend where they rally towards cannabis being legalised. This obviously meant that there was a higher police presence around town. We had a look around a few shops with various smoking paraphernailia, alternative medicines & other cannabis related merchandise, whilst a few brave souls went off looking to purchase some hash cookies. A heavy rain shower had us scurrying back to the bus to discover that a few people had been successful in buying cookies for the bus. The driver advised us to only eat half a cookie & then if you felt no effects after half an hour, you should eat the other half. We headed off on the bus to go & have a BBQ, could be interesting if anybody got the munchies. Once we were around the dinner table, a few people started breaking out into laughing fits, which proved that the cookies were working at least. Most fun of all was Amylou laughing uncontrollably as she couldn't feel her fingers!! Most amusing! We spent the rest of the day back at the hostel, enjoying our relaxed state & playing a few games of cards. A much more fun way of spending the day & completely avoiding the Royal Wedding. Score!

The following day we made the most of the suns reappearance & had a lazy beach day so that our bodies could recover in time for the evenings shenanigans of celebrating Joel's birthday. The previous night whilst playing cards, Joel had challenged a German guy, Janik, to a drinking competition & so he joined our motley crew & we headed out to Cheeky Monkeys to celebrate. We took this evening as an opportunity to introduce Joel to Jagerbombs, a shot of Jagermeister dropped into a glass of Red Bull. After attempting to down one in one go, Joel coughed one back up over a girl. Thankfully she had her backed turned & we managed to blame it on somebody else. Once everyone was sufficiently merry, we hit the dancefloor & the tables. You see in Cheekys, after they stop serving food, the tables are turned into dancing tables!! By this time Janik had vanished, so we declared England victorious in the drinkng competition. At one point of the night, Joel fell off one of the tables, stupidly I tried to catch him. This resulted in me being pulled off the table too. Thankfully Joel took the brunt of the fall. By the end of the night, myself & Laura both had an arm of Joel's around our shoulders & we were helping him on the short walk home, stopping en-route for a pie. Eventually we managed to get the drunken monkey home, but beause he was sleeping in the top bunk, we couldn't actually get him to bed. So I made an executive decision of placing him in the corner of the room & covering him with his duvet cover. Mission accomplished!!

Whilst awaiting for Joel to stir, I spent the following morning in the hostel's jacuzzi. Eventually the beast arose from his pit & we headed off for his birthday treat of seeing the Foo Fighters! Now I know a lot of you were very jealous when you heard we were seeing them, but I must confess that we actually only went to a local cinema to watch their new documentary 'Back & Forth'! Unfortunately, upon reaching the cinema, we were informed that the Australian Board of Film Classification had not yet rated the documentary & so they were unable to screen it. They could however, show a 3-D screening of them playing their new album 'Wasting Light'. So we rocked out to a 3-D band in the cinema for the afternoon which was pretty sweet, just a little strange that you didn't applaude them after each song. That evening we went out for a civilised celebration of Joel's birthday at a pizzeria with Lou, Sally, Laura & another English guy called Danny. Joel didn't have the stomach for anymore drinks, so we called it a night fairly early.

Feeling refreshed for not having any beers the previous night, we went on a 9km walk along the coastline towards a lighthouse. Being possibly the sunniest day in Byron Bay since we arrived, made it hard work climbing up the cliffs, but the views certainly made up for it. We walked to the most easternly point of Australia's mainland & stopped to watch some hanggliders whilst tucking into a pie & bacon butty at the lighthouse's cafe. During our walk back along the beach, we bumped into Lou & Sal sunbathing. They were planning on going to see the film 'Paul' that evening & so we joined them as we were leaving the next day & wanted a fairly early night.